


Care and Care Alike

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash, Sick!Dean, caretaker!sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 12:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6705076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's too sick for this drive, but he's gonna stick it out because it's his job. Although, Sam might prove otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm still sick, and I guess that means I'm still stickin' it to poor Dean. Funny how it helps you feel a little better to make your favorite fandom suffer. There's something sadistic in that...isn't there?

Dean crunched the ice between his teeth and winced. It hurt. Fuck, everything hurt. The ends of his hair even hurt. Three empty coffee cups were in the footwell on the passenger side of the Impala, but the heat had quit working against the ache of his swollen throat sixty miles back, so he'd turned to ice. His chest was heavy and just...hell, it just _hurt_. Right along with his scratchy, ringing ears and his pounding head. Christ he never should have let it get this bad, but it had hit so fast, almost out of the blue. 

Less than forty-eight hours ago he was fine, fresh off a hunt with John, and maybe that had been his undoing, tracking those Felinsius through the freezing sleet of upstate Washington, occasionally crossing over to Canada to keep their trail. They'd been on foot almost the whole way, temperatures hovering only a handful of degrees above freezing at night and not much better during the day. He'd spent most of three days soaked to the bone, and when they'd finally caught up to, trapped, and banished the little bastards back to the faerie realm from whence they'd come, John hadn't even paused to clean up at a local motel, just driven on through back to the hotel on 56 outside of Bellingham, stayed long enough to shower and change and was in the passenger side of Caleb's truck and telling Dean to get their shit packed up and head toward Bobby's. He'd meet them there in a week. 

Sam hadn't even gotten to see him. He was still in school. 

Dean crunched another piece of ice, coughed when a trickle of frigid water went down the wrong pipe and then hacked so hard he felt like his ribs were going to shatter. It was a dry cough and it cut, like razor blades coming up. Sam stirred in the seat beside him and knuckled at his eyes, looking about four years younger, still drowsy and sleep mussed, than his currently peevish fifteen. He'd fallen asleep a state line and a hundred miles back, sullen and recalcitrant that he was going to miss the school field trip to the planetarium tomorrow because Dean was insisting on leaving, following Dad's orders. He should have just let the kid have his way and gone on the trip. He'd have been sick enough by the time Sam got back that he'd have decided to keep his ass at the motel until he was well again and wouldn't be on a highway too far from where they'd left but not close enough to where they were headed to turn around now and be any better off. 

'De?' Sam was wedged against the door, turned to look at Dean with a furrowed brow at the way he was hunched, white knuckling the steering wheel and trying not to cough so hard he ran them off the road. 'Dean, you okay? You sound...a lot worse.'

His first instinct was to snap at the the kid. Of course he was worse! Fuck, he felt like he was dying. He'd been cut, burned, stabbed, and on one memorable occasion so far, shot, and none of that had felt as bad as this. This cloying ache that was so deep in him it had coiled into his heart muscle and was slowing it down to a hard, painful pound that could barely move his sluggish blood through his veins where is passed each pulse point like a clog in the pipes, ebbing before and surging after, making the world expand and contract with the same motion in his vision. 

Sam reached out a hand and slipped it under Dean's collar. It was cool. God, it was cool, felt so good. Sam pushed his fingers up into Dean's short hair for a moment and frowned harder. 

'Dean, you're burning up.'

Dean tossed back another mouthful of ice. 'Got anything else obvious to say, Sherlock?'

Sam flinched and twitched his hand back into his lap. Dean sighed in frustration, at himself and the pain that was getting the better of him. Sudden and sharp he could handle, fight through to the other side with a clear idea of just how long it would last, but this, this ever present increasing ache pulsing out from his bones was something he was starting to wonder might get the better of him. 

Sam turned in the seat to stare out the windshield. A bright green and neon white highway sign blew by the window. Sam acknowledged it with a coarse,

'I need to take a piss.'

Dean quirked an eyebrow at his little brother for second. Sam didn't usually talk like that. That would be something Dean would say. Kid must still be pissed. He shrugged, signaled, and pulled off at the exit. 

There wasn't much there except the gas station mentioned on the highway sign, a diner that might or might not have served pie but that closed at nine even on weekends apparently, and what had been a Motel 6 at some point but was now a used car lot for the locals, or a salvage yard, depending on how you looked at it. The station itself was small, not one of those national chain affairs, but it appeared to be pretty clean from the outside, and Dean pulled into the brightly lit pumps. 

'Get me a large coffee and another soda. Mostly ice,' Dean said before he got out to work the pumps. He pulled out his wallet and tossed it in Sam's direction. Sam snatched it out of the air without hardly looking and headed into the station with his head bent and his hands fisted in his hoodie pockets, back a hard line of tension and anger. 

Damn, the kid needed to loosen up.

Dean cursed, coughed, and spat onto the concrete. Shit, maybe this was Karma. If he hadn't been so hot to trot and follow Dad's orders to the damn 'T', Sam'd be all happy and geeking out over the laser light show of stars or whatever it was they did at planetariums, and Dean would probably be flopped in the motel bed with a can of tomato and rice soup instead of shivering out here in the post-midnight chill. 

He hunched inside his leather coat and leaned on the back bumper while the pump ticked over. His whole body felt tight, on the edge of snapping, every muscle was taut, at its breaking point, every joint grinding under tension when he moved. He wanted nothing more than to let go of it, to just relax, but if he did, they would not be making it to South Dakota tonight. They might not even be leaving this gas station. 

He was reaching the point of stupidity, he knew, and danger. That worried him the most. He couldn't look after Sam in this condition, not properly. It wasn't as though the kid was defenseless or anything. Quite the opposite. Dean had made sure of it, but he'd always factored himself into the equation as well, always had himself at Sam's back, watching out for him, keeping an eye on the kid. 

He peered in the station windows at Sam who was standing at the check out now pointing out at the pump as he unfolded the few bills left in Dean's wallet. And that was one of the reasons they weren't just pulling into motel so Dean could sleep this off, because this tank of gas and his coffee and a couple of candy bars were going to be the end of his cash supply, and the credit card John had given him had maxed out yesterday on the last motel. 

So, when Sam came out with two fully stuffed plastic sacks in hand, Dean bristled. They were gonna wind up rolling into Bobby's on fumes if they managed to roll it at all since Dean was pretty sure Sam had just drained the last of the cash on whatever was in those bags. No point in pissing at the kid about it now, though, he was too tired for that. Besides, they'd had leftover granola bars for dinner, and Sammy was a bottomless pit lately and probably starving. Dean frowned at the boney set of the kid's shoulders under his hoodie and the way the hems of his jeans dragged on the concrete because they were sagging so badly on his narrow hips. 

He took his soda in silence and opened the door so Sam could drop the bags in without losing his grip on the two large coffees he held.

'I'll be back in a minute,' he said, and wandered across the lot to avail himself of the facilities inside.

When he came back out, the girl behind the counter was smiling at him, not in the way a lot of girls smiled at Dean with a kind of 'oh, please pick me' or 'come here you devil, and I'll show you how it's done' kind of way, but more in a sweet, honest way, like she knew something about him he might not know about himself. She waved him over. 

'I forgot to put these in your brother's bag,' she said, holding out two thick cut pieces of beef jerky in a slim paper bag. 'And tell him these might help. One every twelve hours. I got them for an earache last week, but they'll be better than nothing until you can see a doctor.'

She proffered a small bottle of four nondescript white tablets. Dean stared at it in confusion for a moment, then looked out at where Sam was leaned against the car, stretching up and then forward, working the kinks out of his back, and Dean could almost hear the joints pop from here and felt a little guilty because he knew how bad Sam's growing pains got sometimes, and being stuffed in the cramped car didn't help matters. He turned back to the girl, poised to politely refuse the pills, because what the hell had Sam told her? But she held them out a little farther toward him and said quickly,

'He really loves you, you know?' She smiled, blushing a little. 'He's worried about you.'

Dean just stared, a little goggle-eyed he was sure, but his brain was too addled right now, expending the last ounces of energy it had to get them to their destination, to bother with trying to look or act smooth for this strange girl; so he took the jerky, and the pills, and croaked out a 'thank you' that she responded to with another smile and a quick nod.

As Dean approached the car, Sam held out his hand.

'Give me the keys.' Dean stared at him. Sam wiggled his fingers impatiently. 'Give me the keys, Dean.'

Dean fished them out of his jeans pocket and handed them over like he was in a trance. Sam was plenty tall enough to drive even if he was a little young yet and didn't have a legitimate license. He knew how to, Dad and Dean had taught him when he was ten, just in case, but Sam had never actively asked to drive. Ever.

He was swinging the passenger side door open and giving Dean a push down, and Dean followed, too shell shocked to refuse or resist and watched dumbly through the window as Sam made his way around the front and slid in behind the wheel, actually adjusting the seat _back_ to accommodate his legs, then he leaned over and started rummaging through the sacks. He pulled out a veritable pharmacy from one bag: cough syrup, ibuprofen, lozenges, and a couple of different kinds of generic cold pills. The other bag had bottles of Gatorade and water, a couple pudding snacks, and some hard candies. Nothing in there for Sam except one of the coffees. Dean wordlessly handed over the jerky and the bottle to add to the growing collection Sam was setting on the dash.

'Dude,' he said softly, and Sam looked up, a wry little smile on his lips.

'You think I never pay any attention, do you?' he asked. There was no bite or accusation in the words. 'All the times you've taken care of me, you think I never noticed what you did.' He peered at the bottle of pills in the dome light, and muttered, 'This'll do. She give you these?'

Dean nodded mutely, still watching his little brother, the one whose nose he'd been wiping for the last fifteen years, suddenly turn into this competent young man he'd never seen before—or at least not seen clearly enough. Something tugged hard behind his breastbone, but he didn't have the energy to pay it much mind amid all the other aches and pains. 

'She said she was studying to be a nurse,' Sam said, as he doled out two ibuprofen and handed them over to Dean. 'I told her you were sick. Probably needed a doctor as soon as I could get your stubborn ass to see one.'

Dean swallowed the pills without a word, washing them down with a mouthful of soda, and letting the well meant jibe go without comment. Sam measured out a generous dose of cough medicine and handed that over next. 'Drink,' he commanded. Dean downed that as well. Finally, Sam read the label on the bottle of antibiotics again, and poured one into his palm and held it out. 'This, too.'

He bundled everything back up in the sack and set it in easy reach in the footwell. 'You should drink one of the Gatorades if you can,' he said, turning to start the car. 'Hopefully, those antibiotics will start to work until we can get you in to see Dr. Clay.'

'Sam…'

'I don't know what bug you caught, but I think those are pretty generic. I recognize the name from the stuff you got me when I had strep a could years ago—'

'Sam.'

Sam smacked the flat of his hand on the steering wheel, and Dean flinched, more because he hated his baby getting hit by anyone, but he wasn't going to complain at his little brother's frustration, since it was pretty plain now Dean had caused most of it.

'Dean, if you'd just…said something,' Sam started. He twisted the steering wheel hard in his clenched hands. 'You don't have to—to be such a masochistic asshole all the time.' He turned a hard glare on his brother that anyone else would probably quail beneath, and that made a tiny warm ball of pride settle in Dean's belly because his little baby brother was growing up—faster maybe than Dean could keep up with now it looked like—and he wasn't going to be any geeky, mealy mouthed, pushover. 

Sam sighed and reached across the seat back to snag one of the wadded up blankets they kept in the back, pulled it across the seat and pushed it gently at Dean. 'Get some rest. I'll get us to Bobby's.'

'You—' Dean cleared his throat and winced at the burning scrape at the back of his mouth, but started again. 'You know where you're goin'?'

Sam rolled his eyes. 'You really do have no faith in me,' he said and turned on the ignition.

'Not that,' Dean objected in a rasp. 'Just…my job. To take care of you.'

That kind of encompassed a lot, Dean knew, and didn't really answer to the statement very well, but apparently Sam understood. He paused in putting the car into gear and leaned over enough to press a hand flat over Dean's heart. 'Yeah, I know. But just sometimes, I'd like you to let me take care of _you_ , okay?'

Dean nodded, unable to voice any words past the scrape and scratch of his aching throat, or the mysterious lump that had suddenly formed there. Sam patted him and put the car in drive. 

'Get some sleep. I'll wake you when we get there.'

Dean slipped down in the seat, allowing himself to rest his head against the back of the seat, but he was determined to stay awake while Sam drove. Not because he didn't trust the kid, but because it was something Sam shouldn't have to be doing in the first place, and Dean knew from way too much first hand experience how hard it could be to drive on the other side of midnight while all the rest of the world was asleep. 

He sipped dutifully at the Gatorade, alternating with the coffee and cold soda until the pain pills started taking effect. Then he hunched a little deeper under the blanket and pinned his eyes open wide against the weight dragging his lids down now that the pain was starting to ebb, and counted headlights as they passed going the opposite direction. Sam reached forward and turned on the tape deck low volume. Zeppelin rolled out molasses slow from the speakers, and Dean felt sleep plucking at him with gentle, insistent fingers, making promises of a painless, dark cocoon to hold him.

The last thing he could recall was Sam's fingers slipping under the blanket to twine around his wrist and squeeze there gently while he murmured. 'Sleep, Dean.'

 


	2. Chapter 2

Consciousness  lapped at Dean like the waves of a tide coming in at dawn, breaking over him gently, so slowly he was almost unaware. He didn't bother to open his eyes. His other senses told him well enough where he was: the familiar smell of old, old paper and bookbinding glue, the worn expanse of slightly lumpy twilled fabric beneath him, the sound of coffee perking in a twenty year old pot that grumbled at its thankless existence every time it was set to brew. Bobby's. They'd made it to Bobby's. Not that Dean had doubted Sam's abilities.

His recent, spotty memory was littered with several 'idjits' and succinct descriptions of John's parenting skills, Sam's soft voice making hushed explanations, and Bobby's strong arms hefting Dean out of the Impala and very nearly carrying him inside to deposit him in Bobby's overstuffed arm chair in the library.

Sleep's promised cocoon still held him snuggly, and Dean was loathe to break it, but he rolled his head and cracked an eye to see the gray of early, early dawn at the window and Sam draped across the couch, a quilt thrown over most of him, one arm tucked under his head as a pillow, and the other reached across the scant space between the couch and armchair to disappear under Dean's own quilt. He felt thin fingers wrapped around his wrist again. Still. A thumb brushed lightly across the tender underside, and when he blinked, his little brother's eyes were open, sleepy and soft and smiling a little. 

'Go back to sleep, Dean,' he whispered in the dark, and squeezed lightly at Dean's wrist. 'We're safe.'

Dean didn't expend the energy to nod, just closed his eyes obediently and almost immediately felt the waking tide ebb outward and leave him for the gentle darkness of sleep once more. He had just enough presence of mind left to turn his hand beneath the blanket and open his fingers so that Sam could slot his own in between and lace them tightly together. His last thought as he drifted off into the dark was to wonder why anyone who had this would need any sweeter dreams.


End file.
